Showing results by narrator "Helen Duff" in All Categories

England, 1918. As war ends, across the world people are trying to heal and recover. But Eleanor still feels broken. The loss of her beloved brother, killed just days before the Armistice was signed, feels impossibly unjust. Spending her time in the neglected garden behind their house, she fears her heart will never recover. Then her father hires a man to help restore the garden to its former glory.

Your life isn’t perfect, but you’re still happy. Your husband has stuck by you, and he’s a good dad. Your daughter, Becca, makes your heart explode with love. And then, in the time it takes to say ‘bad mother’, there’s no longer a place for you in your own family. Your right to see your child has disappeared. Life goes on in your house - family dinners, missing socks and evening baths - but you aren’t there anymore. Becca may be tucked up in bed in Rose Cottage, but she is as lost to you as if she had been snatched from under your nose.

With her marriage in danger of falling apart, Joanna returns home to the beautiful but dilapidated Mulberry Farm Cottage in Dorset, where her sister Harriet is struggling to keep the farm afloat and cope with their eccentric mother. When Joanna discovers a bundle of love letters in the attic, written by a watercolourist named Emmy, she is intrigued and sets out to discover Emmy's true story. Emmy's letters take Joanna to the picturesque alleyways and bridges of Lisbon, Prague, and the most romantic place of all: Venice - where a whole new magical world seems to unfold in front of her.

I’ve always longed to be a mother. So when my sister Sophia suddenly offers to be a surrogate for my husband Mark and I, it feels like our dream could finally come true. Sophia and I may have drifted apart, but tears of joy prick my eyes when I think about the precious, perfect gift she is giving us. And even though Mark is acting distant, I’m sure this will make us stronger than ever. When Sophia starts talking to us less and less I can’t help but worry… is it just like twenty years ago, when she disappeared from my life? Or will it be different now she’s carrying our miracle baby?

Nobody talks about my mother. Absolutely nobody. I have no idea what she was like. I’d always thought they kept quiet about her because they were sad. But what if it was because they were guilty?

1832. The morning after her father's funeral, Prudence Merryfield wakes to the liberating thought that this is the first day of her new life. At thirty-five and unmarried, she is now mistress of her own fate. But a cruel revelation at the reading of her father's will forces Prudence to realise that taking only the most drastic action will set her free. Present day. Eliza is gifted a family heirloom by her aunt—a Georgian pocket book, belonging to her ancestor, Prudence Merryfield, whose existence reverberates through the lives of generations of Eliza's family, the Ambroses.

Amy had it all money, brains and beauty. And then the accident happened. The Present Day: Left blind and without her family, Amy feels she needs to escape. On a trip along the Camino de Santiago - the Way of St James - she is accompanied by the mysterious and troubled Luke. Having been set up to help Amy by a mutual friend, Luke finds he is running from his past... 1314: A Templar Knight, Luc, is also running. He meets the wife of a former comrade, now blinded in a terrifying attack: Aimee.

A fairytale ending isn’t just for fiction... The Borrow-a-Bookshop is recovering, seven months after the winter flood that destroyed all its wares. When newest resident Joy Foley arrives in Clove Lore with her daughter, five-year-old Radia Pearl, she is set to drag the Bookshop into the 21st century by virtue of her tech expertise. But Joy has a secret. She is on the run from Radia Pearl’s father. She can’t settle down here or anywhere.

'Tis the season for finding love... and the perfect book! With just two weeks until Christmas, everything in Clove Lore should be perfect. But the latest holidaymaker to the Borrow a Bookshop is feeling far from festive... Icelandic ex-bookseller Magnús Sturluson might be surrounded by love stories in the Bookshop, but he’s nursing a sadness that not even fiction can fix. When Alexandra Robinson winds up stranded in Clove Lore, she finds a safe place to hide from heartbreak. After all, all that’s waiting for her at home is a cheater boyfriend and the memories of her parents.

Three women with something to hide. A beauty clinic in a former asylum. One deadly secret. Jenny: a troubled woman who spent time at the clinic when it was an asylum. Amy: a guest at the clinic who will do anything to transform her body. Rebecca: the doctor who will stop at nothing to make the clinic successful. What happens to them at the clinic will change everything...

Can she write her perfect love story? Austen Archer is on her dream solo bookselling holiday, the new ‘borrower’ at the Borrow-A-Bookshop in Devon’s Clove Lore. While she has always loved poetry, her words have dried up since being fired by her last boss, bestselling author, Callista Flyte...

When Detective Jackie Cooke is called out to the scene, she’s expecting a routine check. The bottle of pills on the kitchen table, next to the note with the single word SORRY written in a shaky hand, make it seem obvious what’s happened. But Jackie is shocked when she recognises her old schoolfriend Claire--and she is convinced Claire would never take her own life.

Rebecca Bray has moved on from a childhood she wants to forget. She has the dream fiancé, a loving stepdaughter and a career she's proud of. But with a move back to her hometown of Cornwall, everything she wanted to bury starts to surface. And when her stepdaughter goes missing at a New Year's Eve party, Rebecca must finally face the ghosts of her past - or Ava might never come home safely.

Journalist Zoe Kincade arrives in the rundown seaside town of Sunshine Sands to report on this year's talent show. The motionless Ferris wheel blurs into the dark sea beyond and polystyrene chip trays bounce along the pavement. She checks into the Forget-Me-Not hotel, a faded Edwardian terrace that has seen better days, the place her beautiful older sister Jane stayed the night she disappeared. Zoe has spent forty years trying to block out the pain. The aftermath of that night destroyed her chance of a happy marriage and living in any kind of peace.

Jenny has too much on her plate, literally - she’s pregnant with only one child, but she’s already eating for three. Not to mention trying to juggle her future life with a baby, a nightmare boss, a know-it-all sister, and a bizarrely laid back husband.

A decade after they said goodbye after graduation, old friends Harri and Annie reunite in the beautiful village of Clove Lore in Devon – what more could these bookworms want than a holiday running the tumbledown bookshop? Unbeknownst to Annie, Harri is arriving with a bruised heart after the...

One ordinary morning, Laurie's husband, Mark, vanishes, leaving behind his phone and wallet. For weeks, she tells no one, carrying on her job as a cleaner at the local university, visiting her tricky, dementia-suffering father and holing up in her tower-block flat with a bottle to hand. When she finally reports Mark as missing, the police are suspicious. Why did she take so long? Wasn't she worried? It turns out there are many more mysteries in Laurie's account of events, though not just because she glosses over the facts.

In a freezing, isolated farmhouse with ice on its windows, Flora is looking after her sick mother. Since she was a little girl, Flora has been frightened of her mother. And when she discovers a photo of a smiling baby girl she doesn’t recognize, hidden at the bottom of a drawer, her mother grows even more remote, and refuses to talk about it. So, when a visitor arrives from a paradise island of sapphire coves and white sand beaches, and confirms that the baby in the picture is her sister, she should feel joy. But, he also brings the news that Flora’s sister is dying.

Born in a honeysuckle-choked garden deep in the forest, Aphrodite - young, sensitive and beautiful - learns her true purpose in the world moments before she's cast out of the only home she's ever known. Haunted by loneliness, she begins a journey to fulfill her destiny. It is a path that will lead her into the arms of four very different men - a dreamer, a fighter, an artist, and a lost soul. All human, all flawed, and all on their own journeys of painful self-discovery. But could it be the secrets she left behind that hold the answers to the questions she's seeking?

Lizzie Green once loved Tom Murphy with a passion that bordered on obsession. All she wanted was his love to be returned. Then one night, something terrible happened and Tom left Lizzie broken hearted. She swore she would never let him hurt her again. Now, ten years later, Tom turns up on Lizzie’s doorstep still as charming as ever. Lizzie knows he still has the power to break her heart and destroy her life again. But Lizzie can’t say no to him.